TestBash Brighton 2018 : My first TestBash

During the week of the 11th of March 2018, I had the great opportunity to attend to the TestBash Brighton 2018.

Day 1 to 3

Automation In Testing Workshop

Given by Richard Bradshaw (@FriendlyTester) & Mark Winteringham (@2bittester).

Three days workshop, requesting some upfront preparations (installing some softwares, listenning to some podcasts, reading some documents)... 

When I was listening to the podcasts, I was really happy because Richard was putting the right words on my thoughts and I had the impression to feel less alone in my fight about the test automation without discernment, strategy.

The workshop confirms this and gives tools.

Not automation tools :) but framework, hints & tips to build the automation strategy.

In my professional life, I've attended to trainings, workshops but not like this one... Richard and Mark are so passionate about the topic that it's incredible... I don't know how it's possible to give so much energy and transmit it to the audience.

I'm sure that some attendees were a bit deceived (frustrated?) by the workshop because we did not really use, practice automation tools but... I think that before using a tool we have to understand first why we want to use it and by digging a bit we have to find if this tool matches our needs.

A tool is a tool, it has its goals, rules, documentations, trainings but most of the times you don't have direct information about the why and when to use it. Vendors are telling you lot of things like "reduce your testing time or cost by at least 50%"... Great and what about maintenance, evolutivity, efficiency?

Here during the workshop we learned about thinking to this kind of question first and afterwards trying to find the right tool based on our knowledge and not based on what the vendors say.

Maybe this workshop could be completed by an additional day about specific tools but I just have the impression that if this kind of additional day is given, attendees will limit their own "creativity" about searching tools to the ones which will be thaught during the workshop...

Definitely, I think that this workshop was great and the only negative point I could find is...

Mark & Richard did not align enough on the small roleplay they played in front of us during the first afternoon :).

Day 4

I need to be honest... I don't remember what was the topic and who did the first talk... Shame on me... :(

Workshop - Exploratory Testing 101

Given by Mark Winteringham (@2bittester) and Dan Ashby (@danashby04)

We started with real exploration... exploring the conference centre following a test script... This part shows us the limit of this kind of approach in testing.

Afterwards, by chosing a specific approach (security) we did the same visit by our own and we identified so many stuffs in the first room that it was incredible. During the test script execution, we just spend less than 1 minute in the room and during this exercice, we spent 10 minutes there and I think we could have spent more times and found just more issues.

It show us via a real life example (not a software nor application) how exploratory testing is valuable and how much the timeboxing for this approach is needed otherwise... we will lose ourself in the limbs :).

We applied exploratory on an online "game" and damn... we identified so many small stuffs in this game in just 10-15 minutes, it's amazing...

We got some information about what to do, but the workshop was mainly done using our input (or giving us the impression it was the case) so great community work :).

My only negative point about this workshop is...

Maybe we were a little bit too much in this small room :).

Workshop - The Ultimate Story Telling

Given by Beren Van Daele (@isleoftesting) and Ard Kramer

How to tell story to people... I must admit I don't remember why I subscribed to this workshop :).

Maybe I was thinking "it will help to increase our user stories description"... so I was first disapointed about the workshop... and it took me a while to understand the values of it... :)

First value

I bought the TestSphere cards deck and understand the usage of the Feeling cards for the Sprint Retrospective (first try will be done very soon within a squad).

Second value

We want to build Communities of Practices at my customer's place, and the usage of this card decks as Icebreaker or even in the same configuration as the workshop took place is a real advantage.

I know I'm not a good story teller ;) but I'm sure that helping, facilitating people to discuss about several topics is a the key message of this card decks...

As helping people to put the right word on something will help them to progress... and for me it's the Third value of it.

We had a really nice time during the workshop and it helped us to discuss openly with the other workshop attendees so great workshop :).

Talk - I have a secret

Given by Anusha Nirmalananthan (@anusha_n).

It's never easy to speak about our (personal) problems to colleagues or friends, sometimes, by not telling things we increase the pain we feel... 

And it's not always easy to be the one receiving the information about the problem...

So Anusha told us about her personal trip inside this, not always easy to hear when you're someone hiding things to the others (to avoid stressing them or just to avoid questions, judgments)...

It requests a lot of courage from her and I can just admire her and tell to the others

"Don't wait too long before talking about something... "

"Don't judge the ones having the courage to speak..."

Day 5 - Speeches day

The most important talk on this day was for me:

"Community of practice, the missing piece in your organisation" by Emily Webber (@ewebber)

For the moment, I'm involved as member in a Community of Practice, based on the speech of Emily & her book, I've made a small intro about CoP to the chapter leads at my customer's place and, last but not least, with 3 collègues with start buiding a DevOps Guild.

So definitely,l Emily's speech was a great help.

Don't misunderstand me, the other topics were interesting, I just got more value from the one of Emily.

I was also impressed by the courage of the people whom participate to 99 seconds talks...

I had no ideas of topics I could speak about so I did not join… Maybe next time…. 😊